Lust

by Victoria Christopher Murray

  There was nothing close to a smile on his face when Trey spoke those words, then took a long swig of his beer. I hesitated, watching him before I brought my glass to my lips.

  May she bring you all that you deserve.

  Odd words for a toast.

  When Trey placed his glass onto the table and looked up, half his face was covered with his grin. Okay! He was back and I breathed, then took a sip of my wine and pushed away my hesitation.

  I felt like I was trippin’. I was analyzing and scrutinizing his words. I was acting like I needed to keep my guard up with my boy, but what I needed to do was chill and remember that no matter what, Trey had always been down with me. No one had been closer or knew me better. I needed to keep that top of mind and get back to the discussion of us working together that I’d planned.

  So, pushing my paranoia all the way back, I said, “Thanks,” to his toast and brought my glass to my lips once again.

  The moment my glass hit the table, Trey asked, “So, Tiff must be some kind of girl to make you turn in your card.”

  That made me toss aside all thoughts that I had of talking to my boy, because he wanted to talk about my girl. But there was one place where I had to set him straight. The thing about my soon-to-be bride was that everyone called her by her full name—Tiffanie. No one shortened it, except for me. But how would Trey know that?

  “So,” Trey began, “you ain’t got nothin’ to say about that?”

  I was trying to get a measure . . .

  “Nothin’ to say about Tiff?” he said as if I needed a reminder of who he was talking about. “Where’d you two meet?”

  I couldn’t quite explain the suspicion that rose inside me, making me once again scrutinize, analyze, and hesitate. But after a moment, I just slid right into the story. “At Howard. I needed some help, so I went down to the campus looking for an intern and found my wife. When I walked into that building, she was sitting there waiting just for me.”

  “Just sitting there, huh?” he questioned with a smirk. “A young one.”

  I nodded. “That’s the way it happened.” I left out the part about how long the struggle had been that had taken us from that day at Howard eight years ago today.

  He laughed. “You always did have major game. What line did you give her?”

  He wasn’t lying. Both Trey and I had lots of game when it came to females. We used to entertain each other with stories of our conquests. But what Trey didn’t understand was that this right here with Tiffanie was no joke. She had earned my heart and I needed to set Trey straight about that.

  “I didn’t give her any kind of line.”

  His glance was filled with doubt. “So what’re saying? That you . . .”

  “Felt her from the beginning,” I finished for him. “From the moment I saw her, my heart knew, even if my head didn’t.”

  He nodded, kinda slow, like he was finally coming to an understanding. “Cool.”

  I nodded, too, ready to change the subject back to my purpose for getting together tonight, when Trey asked, “So it was like that? Love at first sight?”

  It was another one of those perfect Walter moments—the bartender stepping up to the table with a tray covered with three plates. As he arranged our snacks in front of us, it gave me a moment to do a little more studying. Now I asked myself straight out—why did Trey want to talk about Tiffanie? I’d already explained that she wasn’t like the females in my past. She was my wife already in my heart; it had been that way for a long time for me. So, Trey needed to understand that I didn’t want to nor was I going to talk about her in the same way we’d talked about chicks before.

  But then, in the next moment, I saw it. While Trey chatted with Walter, asking him how long he’d worked here and how he liked it, I saw the curiosity on Trey’s face. My boy just wanted information so that he could connect.

  I was forgetting that he’d just paid seven years. He wasn’t around when Whitney died or when Alicia Keys’s and Swizz Beatz’s baby was born. He’d missed the rise of iPads and the fall of BlackBerry. He didn’t get to celebrate the Redskins choosing RG3 or mourn the disaster that followed after.

  And he certainly missed most of Barack Obama’s presidency and how white folks had lost their damn minds.

  Yeah, I needed to give my boy some space to acclimate. That’s why he wanted access to my life. Maybe, if I gave him that, Trey would see how I lived and loved and would want a piece of my peace.

  When Walter walked away, I blessed the food, and when I looked up, Trey had already taken two bites of his slider as if he didn’t even notice that I’d bowed my head. That was one of the things I couldn’t wait to do—take Trey to church with me and Tiffanie. He would be suspicious about the whole preacher thing since we’d dissed pastors, calling them pulpit pimps, back in the day. But I was pretty sure that Tiffanie’s gramps would help Trey see the light. My hope was that God would change him like He’d changed me.

  “So,” Trey began, ready to take us back into the conversation, “you fell in love with her”—he shook his head as he said those words—“just like that?”

  I grabbed one of my sliders. “I can’t say that it was love at first sight. I just knew when I saw her that she was special.”

  “So, she wore you down all the way to marriage?”

  I paused, wondering if I should share more—like how I’d been the one to do the wearing down and how it had taken a year for her to even go out with me. “Something like that,” I said, thinking that was all the access he needed.

  Food filled his mouth, so he only chuckled and nodded. After a couple of swallows, he said, “So back then, you were just hittin’ it?”

  Even though I didn’t want to let him too far in, I needed to correct him on this fact real fast. “I told you, it was never like that.”

  He shook his head as if my words couldn’t be believed. “So what caught you? Why her?” He didn’t give me a chance to answer when he continued, “’Cause I’ve got to say that when you told me you were getting married . . .”

  “I know. I wasn’t looking for love, but love found me.”

  His face creased like he’d just seen a horror show. “Ah, bruh, you’re not going out like that, are you? You’re not gonna start quoting love songs and Shakespeare?”

  “Nah.” I laughed, but then I got serious. “All I can say is that Tiff is nothing like the others; she wasn’t into me for my game, she never cared about what I was stackin’, she never asked me to buy her a thing. Hell, it took me . . .” I hit the brakes and pulled back my words. “So what about you? What you got going in Atlanta?”

  My thought was that this would get me and Trey back to the track that I wanted to take.

  But I was on one track and he was on another, because he said, “I just cannot believe it. I cannot believe you got caught. I can’t believe she’s that special to you.”

  I reminded myself that he was just feeling himself around my world. “She’s that special. Made just for me. She’s not sitting at home waiting to live off my dollars; she’s focused on her own dreams in her own world. But then when she comes home, she makes it all about me. That girl loves me, loves every part of me. And that’s what makes her different from the others.” I slowed down my words. “She loves me.”

  The size of the smile on Trey’s face told me that it was amusement not agreement with my sincerity.

  “You believe her when she says that to you?”

  His skepticism didn’t bother me because we’d always dealt with the same kinds of females; we’d never trusted any of them, both of us knowing they were there for just one thing. Seeing me with my heart wide open had to be a concept that was hard for him to grasp. “I don’t have to take her word.” I began to break it down for him. “When you’re loved like that, words aren’t needed. It’s in here.” I pounded my chest. “This is real, for her and for me. And I’
m never gonna do anything to mess this up.”

  He sat back in the booth, looking like he was about to bust out laughing. “So what are you sayin’? You gonna turn down the strippers at your bachelor party? Gonna give up your last chance until the first jump-off comes along?”

  Now he couldn’t hold back his laughter. He cracked up, and I just smiled, letting him have his laugh. I put my burger down, crossed my arms in front of me on the table, and leaned forward. I waited till he got all of his chuckles out of his system before I said, “I’m not gonna turn down the strippers.”

  “That’s what I’m sayin’.” He lifted his fist like he wanted to give me dap, but I left him hanging.

  “Because there ain’t gonna be no strippers.”

  His hand dropped to his lap.

  “I don’t roll like that no more. No strippers, no jump-offs, from this day forward”—I tapped my forefinger on the table—“Tiffanie Cooper is the only woman for me.”

  Trey didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to; his expression said it all—wow!

  I leaned back and sealed what I’d just told him. “Trust that.”

  He looked at me now as if I was the one who needed to be studied. But then he began to nod. And a smile came with it.

  “Any more questions?” I asked, feeling pretty good about what I’d just broken down for my boy.

  “Nah.” He chuckled. “You just dropped some knowledge and the mic.”

  I laughed.

  “Well, maybe I do have one more. Since you’re going all the way, taking this step and everything . . . you gonna have kids?”

  With that question, I couldn’t even stop the left-to-right grin that spread across my face. “Of course. I want dozens. That’s why I got me a young one.”

  His head fell back and he howled. “You’re right. Tiffanie’s a pretty young thang. But dozens? She’s agreed to that?”

  “Not quite. I haven’t been able to convince her that the world needs dozens of little Kings. But I’m good with what she’s talking about . . . one, maybe two.” I paused. “For now.”

  His smile was as wide as mine when he said, “Seems like you got it all worked out. Your life is set.”

  “You know how I do. It’s all about planning your work and then working your plan. My life has always been that way. I knew what I wanted and I got it.” This time, I was the one to raise my glass. Trey raised his, too, and clicked it against mine. Then, without another word, we finished up our sliders, with Trey probably reflecting on the education I’d just served him. The conversation had left me thinking, though, that this wasn’t the right time to talk about bringing him on. I’d just let him get settled tonight and circle back to this. We had plenty more days to discuss it.

  10

  Tiffanie

  When I left my grandparents’ house, my plan was to come home and go straight to bed. Because surely it had to be some kind of exhaustion that had me acting like some kind of fool.

  I just wanted this day to end so that I could wake up tomorrow with a new beginning. All fresh, without thoughts of Trey.

  But what was that cliché about the best-laid plans? Because now, here I was, an hour after midnight, sitting in my darkened apartment, with a half-filled glass of wine. I hadn’t had one minute of sleep . . . the new day was here . . . and Trey was still all up in my head.

  I’d only been in his presence for . . . how long was it? The ride from the airport, then in the booth at Ben’s. I hadn’t spent a full hour with Trey, yet, I had to turn to make sure he wasn’t sitting right here on this sofa with me.

  His face, I could see.

  His hands, I could feel.

  His lips . . . oh . . . those . . . lips.

  I closed my eyes and inhaled, and when I opened them they were damp as if tears were coming. I was so afraid. How had I fallen into this abyss of ridiculousness? How could I be a grown woman and not have control of my thoughts or my feelings?

  I sighed. Why was I asking myself that? I knew the answer before I asked the question.

  I took another sip, leaned back on my sofa, stretched my legs onto the coffee table, and in the darkness forced my mind to focus on Damon. It was so easy to do because every memory of him was filled with fairness and goodness and kindness. That’s who he was to me. Even after I began to reveal my secret to him.

  May 1, 2009

  IT WAS THE rain, at least that’s what I was going to tell Damon, even though the clouds hadn’t fully released their wrath yet. After working together for a year, of course Damon knew that I was time-challenged, but still, every time I promised myself that this time, I’d be on time.

  That thought made me groan and with a hard swing to the right, I swung my car in front of a taxi that hadn’t even come to a stop. The cab’s horn blared, but I ignored the sound and rolled my car to the curb. Stopping in front of the valet stand, I jumped out the moment I turned off the ignition. I didn’t wait for the valet to come to the car; I tossed the keys to the first one I saw and dashed through the doors.

  Old Ebbitt Grill was packed as usual, but I caught Anita’s eye. She nodded, stepped from behind the hostess’s station, and led me through the restaurant. Speaking above the din, I said, “I got caught in the rain,” as if I were practicing the line on her before she took me to wherever Damon had been waiting, probably for close to thirty minutes.

  Anita chuckled, nodded, and then, to my surprise, we exited the main section of the restaurant and stepped into the area with more private tables and even some private dining rooms. But then I just figured that this was Friday night and all of the main section’s tables were probably occupied.

  Damon and I had never had our weekly review meetings on a Friday before, but he’d had to cancel last night and reschedule it for today.

  My thoughts were on that and all the items I wanted to go over with Damon as I followed Anita: I had the fully executed purchase agreement for the art gallery he’d just bought; I needed his review on that. Then there was the budget that Delta Sigma Theta had given for their scholarship ball; Damon needed to approve that. Then there were all the people who’d come to us to sponsor their events—everything from 10K charity runs to charter school sporting events. And then finally, I would give him the good news about . . .

  Anita stepped aside and I stepped inside, to a dimly lit room, the flicker from the flames of the three candles that sat in the center of the single round table the only light.

  I frowned and blinked, then blinked and frowned. “Damon?”

  Damon sat facing the door, and when I entered, he pushed back his chair, stood, picked up a single rose from the table, then took a few steps and handed me the flower.

  I did a little bit more blinking, a little bit more frowning. “Damon?”

  He said nothing, just took my hand and led me to the other chair. The only reason I sat down was because I didn’t know what else to do. My brain wasn’t computing any of this. “What’s going on?”

  Still there were no words from him, at least not until he finally sat in the chair that was more next to me than across from me.

  “What does it look like?”

  “We were supposed to be having our weekly review.”

  He took the portfolio from me and laid it on the table beside him. “We’re having dinner.”

  “We always have dinner. But, what’s this . . . candlelight?”

  “You’ve never heard of a candlelight dinner?”

  I placed the flower down on the table. “Damon.” My eyes were lowered when I sighed his name.

  “Tiffanie,” he sighed back.

  I didn’t even look up, just shook my head. In the last year, Damon had made a couple of little comments about how we should go out together. But every clue that he tossed to me I let drop right there. And it wasn’t just because of the women who passed through the revolving door of his life. I ju
st wasn’t interested in any kind of relationship.

  So it came as a shock to me when he’d asked me to go out with him the week before. I told him no and this time, the shock was his. When his eyes widened and his mouth opened, I knew it was because he was Damon King. He was the owner of one of the top event-planning companies in the DMV area . . . and that was just the beginning of the conglomerate he was building throughout DC, Maryland, and Virginia. But, no matter how fine or on-his-way-to-rich this man was, me and him . . . it was never going to happen.

  With that thought, I finally lifted my eyes and met his. “I told you last week, I wasn’t interested in going out with you.”

  “It’s too late now. We’re already out.”

  Looking at the candles, I shook my head. “No. We’re not.”

  He gave me a long glance before he shrugged. “I don’t get it. We get along so well, Tiffanie. I love talking to you, being with you, and unless my gut is wrong, I think you enjoy being around me, too.” He paused, then lifted his arm and sniffed. “Do I stink or something?”

  I laughed because it was funny, and one of the things I loved about this man was that he always made me laugh. But our laughter would have to stay in the workplace. The smile was still on my face when I said, “No, of course you don’t stink. But I told you, I don’t mix business with pleasure. It’s not a good idea to date the boss.”

  He let a couple of beats go by as if he was pondering my words. And just when I was sure that he got it, he said with the straightest of faces, “Then, you’re fired.”

  “What!” It took me a second to realize that he couldn’t mean it. But just in case, I crossed my arms and said, “If you fire me, that’s sexual harassment.” My tone told him that if he wasn’t playing, I would sue.

  But he was as cool as a beach breeze, the way he gave me one of his sideways two-dimple grins. “No, it’s not. Not sexual harassment if I continue to pay you.”

  Was he kidding me? “That’s prostitution.”